Visualization

Located in the Willamette National Forest in Oregon, H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest supports research on forests, streams, and watersheds, and fosters strong collaboration among ecosystem science, education, natural resource management, and the humanities. The Forest is administered cooperatively by the USDA Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station, Oregon State University, and the Willamette National Forest.

As a charter member of the National Science Foundation’s Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program, the site contributes to the collection of long-term datasets to support research on ecological issues that can last decades. Using Esri’s story maps technology, a simple map-based dashboard was developed to let researchers, administrators, and the general public view real-time data from 125 different sensors including webcams, stream gauges, and weather stations deployed throughout the forest.

“The dashboard is a really nice way to see all these data streams in their spatial context” said Mark Schulze, HJ Andrews Experimental Forest Director. “Being able to look at all these sensors in real time is hugely helpful for making interpretations about how our climate/weather functions in the Andrews Forest,” added Julia Jones, Geosciences Professor at Oregon State University.

“Central place foragers, such as breeding seabirds, need to commute between their nests and foraging grounds, thus close proximity of the breeding colony to productive oceanographic features might be beneficial for seabird reproduction. We tested this hypothesis by investigating the at-sea foraging and breeding behavior of thick-billed murres (Uria lomvia) nesting at three colonies (Bogoslof, St. Paul, and St. George Islands) in the Bering Sea located at different distances from the productive continental shelf-break.

Study sites in the southeastern Bering Sea

“We found that distances to feeding areas differed only during night trips among colonies. St. Paul murres foraged entirely on the shelf, whereas St. George murres commuted to the continental shelf-break at night and foraged on the shelf during the day. Bogoslof murres foraged in oceanic waters in close proximity to the colony. Murres breeding at the both Pribilof colonies spent less time attending nests and had higher levels of stress hormone corticosterone compared to murres breeding at Bogoslof, although chick-provisioning rates and fledging success were similar among the three colonies. Lower nest attendance and higher corticosterone suggest lower food availability in the Pribilof domain compared to the Bogoslof region. Murres breeding at the Pribilofs used different foraging strategies to buffer effects of food shortages on their reproduction: flight costs associated with longer distance night trips at St. George were presumably balanced by benefits of higher density and/or more lipid rich prey in the continental shelf-break regions, whereas the additional distance of St. Paul from the continental shelf-break may have outweighed any energetic gain. Murres exhibited a remarkable degree of plasticity of foraging strategies in response to changes in their food availability, but the breeding success of murres did not reflect either food limitations or the colony proximity to productive oceanographic features.”

“Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) have proven to be highly effective in recovering well localized samples and observations from the seafloor. In the course of ROV deployments, however, huge amounts of video and photographic data are gathered which present tremendous potential for data mining. We present a new workflow based on industrial software to derive fundamental field geology information such as quantitative stratigraphy and tectonic structures from ROV-based photo and video material.

Warping effects due to missing lens distortion parameters (a) superimposed on the correct reconstruction (b). Both models have been aligned at the first camera pose (c), where deviations in the model geometry and position are already apparent. The largest dislocation (gray arrow) in position and camera angle is found between the last images, (d) showing the warped path and (e) the correct path, deviating 29° in pitch, 8° in roll and 1.8° in heading. Crosses mark the location of a corresponding feature referenced in the text. Measurements of a corresponding bedding plane (white planes) indicate a strong deviation in strike (67°, lines) and dip (12°, arrows). The light transparent model (f) and camera planes (g) illustrate the model, which has been aligned to the track coordinates, resulting in positioning and also scaling errors. The white grid represents the true horizontal plane.

“We demonstrate proof of principle tests for this workflow on video data collected during dives with the ROV Kiel6000 on a new hot spot volcanic field that was recently identified southwest of the island of Santo Antão in the Cape Verdes. Our workflow allows us to derive three-dimensional models of outcrops facilitating quantitative measurements of joint orientation, bedding structure, grain size comparison and photo mosaicking within a georeferenced framework. The compiled data facilitate volcanological and tectonic interpretations from hand specimen to outcrop scales based on the quantified optical data. The demonstrated procedure is readily replicable and opens up possibilities for post-cruise “virtual fieldwork” on the seafloor.”

“Rapid viewshed modelling techniques are used to address the conflicts between landscape protection and renewable energy goals in Scotland. The area of the country currently without a view of a wind turbine is calculated and used to identify areas that could be developed as wind farms without further impacting on the non-visible areas.

Viewshed analysis of core wild land areas in Scotland

“The analysis is repeated for protected landscapes and core wild land areas and lowest impact zones identified. The method used relies on the use of voxel-based real-time viewshed modelling techniques to make these analyses practical.”

The importance of visualizing the water column is shown by this output of the Fledermaus mid-water mapping tool over the source of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The visualization, produced by and courtesy of UNH-CCOM (http://ccom.unh.edu/project/deepwater-horizon), shows acoustic backscatter data over the wellhead collected after it was successfully capped in mid-July of 2010. Although the wellhead was indeed capped, the visualization suggests a small amount of natural gas was still escaping.

Satellites can clearly map the ocean surface, and acoustic sensors can map the ocean floor, but ocean scientists currently have a limited view of the water column between the ocean surface and the ocean floor. There is a critical need to study the internal structure of features in the water column such as plumes (hydrothermal vent plumes, oil well plumes as in the Gulf of Mexico spill) or schools of fish to obtain fish stocks dynamics, spawning grounds, seasonal habitats, and to discern the impact of the climate change on these vital resources. To exploit water column data, an efficient means of reading, processing, and analyzing the data is required.

To improve support for multidimensional data and analyses in the ArcGIS environment, Esri has been working closely with partner Quality Positioning Services (QPS). QPS is a maritime technology and services provider with headquarters in The Netherlands, with US-based operations in Portsmouth, NH and Houston, TX. They are a highly specialized company and are well known in the hydrographic, petroleum, and oceanography communities for their domain knowledge and excellent software. QPS recently acquired Esri partner IVS 3D, makers of the Fledermaus scientific visualization system, and are consolidating product lines.

Fledermaus 3D visualization of the northeast Atlantic Ocean.

Fledermaus is heavily used at the world-famous Scripps Institution of Oceanography Visualization Center and is a defacto scientific visualization standard throughout the marine geology and geophysics arm of the ocean science community, including the large international NSF-sponsored programs Ridge 2000, Margins, and the Ocean Observatories Initiative. It is also used at many national hydrographic and naval agencies.

Esri and QPS are now working together to integrate Fledermaus tools into the geoprocessing framework of ArcGIS for Maritime—Bathymetry at version 10.1.

“We extend an existing Virtual Reality terrain visualization framework to support spatial analysis tasks for geoscientific purposes. Interactive measurement of height proﬁles is used as an example application to demonstrate the efficacy of the approach. In this application, virtual reality technology enables superior perception of proﬁle line localization with respect to terrain features.”

“The focus of the DLA Conference 2012 is GeoDesign, 3D-Modeling and Visualization. It will be held in Bernburg at the Kurhaus Conference Center which was built in 1902. Since 1990, the Kurhaus has also housed the Bernburg Research Center INDIGO Innovations Park. The DLA 2012 will include presentations, exhibitions of vendors, poster sessions and workshops. Excursions and social events will take place at the Bernburg Cloister, the nearby Castle Hohenerxleben, the Bauhaus Dessau and the Woerlitz Gardens.”